Name: Surviving Autocracy
Price: 19.76 USD
Availability: InStock
Rating: 4.8 (459 reviews)

Product Description


“When Gessen speaks about autocracy, you listen.” —The New York Times

“The Platonic ideal of the anti-Trump Trump book.” —The Washington Post

As seen on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and heard on NPR’s All Things Considered: the bestselling, National Book Award–winning journalist offers an essential guide to understanding, resisting, and recovering from the ravages of our tumultuous times.

 In the run-up to the 2016 election, Masha Gessen stood out from other journalists for the ability to convey the ominous significance of Donald Trump’s speech and behavior, unprecedented in a national candidate. Within forty-eight hours of his victory, the essay “Autocracy: Rules for Survival” had gone viral, and Gessen’s coverage of Trump’s norm-smashing presidency became essential reading for a citizenry struggling to wrap their heads around the unimaginable. Thanks to the special perspective that is the legacy of a Soviet childhood and two decades covering the resurgence of totalitarianism in Russia, Gessen has a sixth sense for signs of autocracy—and the unique cross-cultural fluency to delineate its emergence to Americans. This incisive book provides an indispensable overview of the calamitous trajectory of the past few years. Gessen not only highlights the corrosion of the media, the judiciary, and the cultural norms we hoped would save us but also tells us the story of how a short few years have changed us from a people who saw ourselves as a nation of immigrants to a populace haggling over a border wall, heirs to a degraded sense of truth, meaning, and possibility.
Surviving Autocracy is an inventory of ravages but also a beacon to recovery—or to enduring, and resisting, an ongoing assault.


Review


Praise for Surviving Autocracy:
“When Gessen speaks about autocracy, you listen.”  —
The New York Times“The Platonic ideal of the anti-Trump Trump book. . . . Offers discomfort and reassurance at once.” —
The Washington Post

“An indispensable voice of and for this moment.” —
Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny
 
“Urgent . . . Gessen’s credentials as an observer of autocracy are impeccable. . . . 
Surviving Autocracy  sharpens an edge of disgust lately blunted by relentless use.” —
The New York Review of Books

“The fearless Russian American journalist probes the black hole between fact and fantasy in [a] taut, incisive critique.”
—O, The Oprah Magazine
 
“Gessen brings . . . a unique blend of intellect and manifold passions. . . [flashing] the fierce attitude and language of the partisan activist in one moment, returning to the cooler mien of a public intellectual the next.” 
—NPR
“Brilliant. . . . [Gessen's] clarity is gemlike and refusal to equivocate precious.”  —
The Guardian 
(London)

“A reckoning with what has been lost in the past few years and a map forward with our beliefs intact.” 
—Interview

“Gessen’s decades-long experience covering the resurgence of totalitarianism in Russia puts them in a unique position to help Americans understand what is happening to the United States under President Donald Trump. . . . Gessen shows us that having the language to understand what is happening is the first step to surviving, and ultimately resisting, an autocratic future.” —
The Nation

“It’s hard to imagine someone more poised to write a book called 
Surviving Autocracy than Masha Gessen. . . . It’s a crucial book for our times.” —
The New York Observer
 
“Unfailingly polemical, precise and analytic.” —
New Statesman (London)

“A stark wake-up call; to those who are looking for what happens now, Gessen’s notes on how we need to rebuild the concept of a ‘we’ in our time are warm and moving, a light of hope that these years can be survived.” —
Lit Hub
  
“A blistering appraisal. . . . 
Surviving Autocracy isn’t merely important reading for anyone who plans to cast a vote in that election, it’s essential.”
 —Shelf Awareness

“A brisk, trenchant account . . . . Gessen’s meticulous research and familiarity with the politica

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